Microsoft says about 8.5 million of its devices affected by CrowdStrike-related outage

(Reuters) 

A global tech outage that was related to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft devices, Microsoft said in a blog on Saturday.

"We currently estimate that CrowdStrike's update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines," it said in the blog.

CrowdStrike has helped develop a scalable solution that will help Microsoft's Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix, Microsoft said, adding that the tech giant had worked with both Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform to collaborate on the "most effective approaches."

Air passengers worldwide faced delays, flight cancellations and difficulty checking in as airports and airlines were caught up in the IT outage that affected numerous industries ranging from banks to media companies.